In Memory of Papang Ceasar B. Malana - We will surely miss you...

cisco telepresence at GMA's ofw diaries

A Tribute to Francis Magalona

WOW PHILIPPINES, BIYAHE TAYO

OLAVIDES family pictures

Shooting The Rapids at Pagsanjan

A GATHERING OF VOICES - the hands-on choral workshop, 2008. culminating concert

ANNOUNCEMENT

IN MY OTHER BLOGSPOT, livelife-olavides.blogspot.com, you will find my posts on medical missions, christian school international activities where my daughter is now enrolled, and other posts.

71st uaap swimming championship

BAñAMOS FESTIVAL - BAYLE SA KALYE, LOS BAñOS, LAGUNA

3rd Olympic Festival , U P Los Baños, Laguna

HAPPY REUNION TO MY CLAN!!!!

Happy Reunion to the Olavides Clan... too bad mga agaws, cancelled my plans to attend, kinda short of budget this time.. maybe next two years, I can have the resources to bundle up all my issues to meet you all.. really meaning to have this chance to know my bloodroots..

problem with uploading pictures

There seems to be a problem with uploading picture in blogspot but not with wordpress. I thought this was because of my slow connection which is still dial-up but when I opened my new wordpress site, lifeliners, olavides.wordpress, I can load pictures easily.. so this past few days, I have been blogging at wordpress, my picture feature blog.

Be Aware Of What Fish You Eat - Part 2

On my March 2 post I warned about the kind of fish we buy in the market... Today, we got this news from ABS-CBN interactive ----



Puffer fish kills 1, downs 10 others

One person died while 10 others were hospitalized after reportedly eating puffer fish in Cebu province, ABS-CBN Regional Network Group reported Monday.

The report said the incident happened around 4 p.m. in Madrilejos town.

According to Mayor Salvador de la Fuente, the victims are from Sitio Romblon in Barangay Malobago.

Puffer fish (also known as Tetraodontidae) is classified as the second most poisonous in the world. Its skin and certain internal organs are highly toxic to humans.

Air Tank in SCUBA Diving

These pictures of SCUBA ( Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus ) tanks I took at Dakak Dive Shop in Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte. There were no diving activities when I went there but I met Mr. Paul Jalosjos, the in-house Dive Master. It was pleasant meeting him and talked about his dive experiences and the dive industry in Philippines which is not so good in this part of the country inspite of the fact that they have one of the best dive spot in the country. He attributed this partly because only foreigners are into this sports and few pinoys are certified divers. This prompted me to research on this.. probably next time.

Well now, for the scuba tank commonly used in recreational dive is made of aluminum and holds 80 cubic feet of air compressed into an area of the tank which is 2 feet high and 6 inches in diameter. Please take note that it is compressed air and not oxygen as many think it is. The compressed air is almost the same as the air we breathe on tierra firma. The standard tank is filled with 2000 to 3000 psi ( pounds per square inch ) of air pressure. The usual dive time I have with 3000 psi is 45 minutes with only 100 psi remaining when I surfaced. Currently, Nitrox, a mixture of nitrogen and oxygen, prolongs bottom time but you take another PADI nitrox course that will teach you the advantages and limitations of Nitrox. As to the double tank, it usually used for extended dive time but is now rarely used, it is too cumbersome.

Be Aware of What Fish You Eat !!! ( Awat ta tits, Butete Kang Daku!!!)

"Awat ta tits !!! Butete kang Daku" , - in English, " You can't fool me, you're a big blowfish"...
A week ago, we went to Dapitan, Zamboanga del Norte, for our monthly medical mission in a nearby barangay of Sibutad, and the day after, our group went on a side trip to Dakak Park and Beach Resort and also did some pasalubong hunting in Dapitan
Public Market. My wife bought some dried fish which she said was cheap compared to prices in our city and that it is quiet fresh and meaty. That's the picture above which is around 1 kilo at 100 pesos per kilo. The next day my wife cooked some for breakfast and it really looked delicious with its meaty part and I ate some dipped in spicy vinegar, also my wife took some big portion and loudly proclaiming that it was really good.. But my son took noticed of the fins and rightly blurted out that's a puffer fish!!!!. Well, we stopped eating and hence the picture...I just don't know what species of puffer fish this is considering that there are 120 species of puffer that live mostly in tropical seas.. It is commonly called butete, tikong in Cebu area, is abundant in Philippine seas. They are aptly named because of their defensive action of inflating themselves with water or air when threatened to make difficult for predator to swallow. Their toxin called tetrodotoxin is mostly located in the liver, testes,ovaries and eggs. The Japanese consider this as a delicacy and even have licensing for chef for preparing this.
Symptoms of tetrodotoxin poisoning is said to occur within fifteen minutes to several hours after eating the puffer fish. Feeling like floating, nausea, vomiting and stomach pain is experienced, lips would feel numb or itchy. Now, this dried fish is in the freezer awaiting further research, meantime, I will have to be content with the familiar dried fish sold in our city..the safest is the fish called "bolinao" which is fondly called "lansang", nails in English..By the way, which is safer to eat, a puffer or a nail???

SHARK ATTACK ! ! !

I am reprinting this news article from CNN because of my latest blog about Great White Shark.. although the attack does not involve the great white shark, nevertheless, all divers are to take lessons from this incidence.. please take note of the list of sharks that are potentially dangerous to humans!!!





From Susan Candiotti
CNN


MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The leader of a shark tour whose customer was mauled to death Saturday was warned that his practice of allowing people to swim close to hungry sharks could lead to tragedy, a colleague said.
art.shark.ap.jpg

Shark feeding was banned in Florida in 2001, so dive operators take customers out to Bahamian waters.

Markus Groh -- an Austrian lawyer -- died after being gnawed during a dive led by Jim Abernethy's south Florida company.

Groh, 49, died from loss of blood resulting from the shark attack near the Bahamas, The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office said.

Neal Watson, a president of the Bahamas Diving Association, told CNN he implored Abernethy to stop what Watson considered a dangerous practice: Cageless shark dives specifically targeting dangerous shark species.

"I hate to say I told you so out of respect for the victim's family, but I've always said it wasn't a matter of whether something like this would happen, it was when," he said.

Abernethy did not return phone calls from CNN seeking comment. The shark dives are advertised on the Web site of his company, Jim Abernethy's Scuba Adventures.

"Abernethy has been swimming with sharks almost his entire life, and is a pioneer in diving with tiger and great hammerhead sharks," the site proclaims. "No one can get you closer, or get you the best photographic opportunities!"

In shark-dive excursions, dead fish and fish entrails are used to attract the sharks and bring them close to the divers. Cageless dives put divers and sharks in close proximity, without a metal underwater cage protecting the diver.

Watson told CNN he also offers a cageless shark tourist experience in the Bahamas, but only with less dangerous species: Caribbean reef sharks, blacktip sharks, blacknose sharks, nurse sharks and silky sharks.

Shark feeding was banned in Florida in 2001, so dive operators take customers out to Bahamian waters, Watson said.

Watson said that he had sent a letter to members of the Bahamas Diving Association in July 2007 urging them to stop cageless dives with about 10 dangerous species. He said he wrote the letter to everybody, even though Abernethy is the only dive operator he knows of who does it.

The letter read in part, "We recommend all operations immediately cease and desist conducting open-water, non-cage shark diving experiences with known species of potentially dangerous sharks such as tiger sharks, bull sharks, hammerhead sharks, lemon sharks, and mako sharks. ... Purposeful feeding or interaction with these species without a proper shark cage is highly discouraged."

Watson said the letter was copied to the Bahamas government, which he said has not outlawed the practice.

Abernethy did not respond, Watson said.

Great White Shark!!!

Yes, it is a great white shark, following the man on a kayak.. This picture is from the Africa Geographic, September, 2005 issue... As a scuba diver in the Philippines, one of the first questions they asked me if I have encountered a shark during my dive?..which is also my first question during my PADI certification training to my instructor..His answer was,.. " I have already lost count of my dive logs and the only times I have encountered sharks were during dives where we specifically go to sites where sharks are known to congregate, and great white shark I have not encountered even once."

The great white shark is the most feared and largest of predatory fish in the ocean, it is also called white death and can reach in length up to 20 feet and weigh up to 2 tons..that's big fish indeed..But what is more fearsome is the shark's rows of teeth behind the main ones, it is serrated like sharp saw..This image of a teeth was permanently imprinted in the movie Jaws..

Great white sharks live in almost all coastal and offshore waters which have a water temperature of between 12 and 24 deg centigrade with densest population found in Dyer Island, South Africa and also found in tropical waters the Caribbeans..It is pelagic,open ocean dweller , been observed in depths of 4,000 feet but usually found close to sea surface.

Now, what is the probability, if you dive in the Philippine seas, being attacked by a great white shark? " Many shark conservationists will answer that the chance of being attacked by a shark is exceedingly unlikely, far smaller than winning the lottery." According to Shark Trust, shark population are on a serious decline, down 2 percent of their original level because of over fishing. But writer James Delingpole of the Daily Mail counters, " just because something probably won't happen doesn't mean it won't happen. And it is that possibility, however slim. which will, for many of us, continue to be the stuff of nightmares."

IS THIS YOUR NIGHTMARE??

Iponan River, Cagayan de Oro City : Muddy

This aerial picture was taken sometime in November, 2007, on a sunny day and for weeks it has not rained in Cagayan de Oro City and Talakag, Bukidnon area. It has been observed by those near the river banks that this situation has been that muddy for many years now. The river is virtually dead and has affected the nearby shores of Barangay Bulua and Bayabas. No swimming or crawling creature can possibly survive in this muck of a river. Contrast that to the picture below and surely one shudders at the thought that this could happen to this site also..That area to the west is where a bible camp is located which stands to be ruined or ruined already. The last time, I dived there with Engr. Derecho, I already noticed a 4-inch deep mud in the vicinity in front of the bible camp and also in the east portion of the river, along the Bulua shore up to the canal drainage of NHA Kauswagan, where once in the late 70s, as a marine biology student we did our plankton survey. Fresh catch of fishes were abundant and the air was as still smog-free then..

It seems that the culprit for this is the activity upstream of Iponan River where gold mining is on-going..Maybe, the local government can do something about this?

Weather and Water Condition Good For Diving

An ideal picture of a good day to dive...Well, not so good for the past three days here in Northern Mindanao, raining and windy all day Monday, white caps and current strong on Macajalar Bay.. even airline flights were canceled that day. a ruin day if one is about to go diving. You got to cancel and plan for another better day.

A good way to insure for a fun dive is monitoring the weather in the targeted dive area a week in advance. A source for this is the local radio and television stations that gets the forecast and trend from PAGASA weather station, and as the week progresses, get the specific local frontal condition of the area such as current, wind and fog and other local illegal fishing practices which might endanger the diver, such as dynamite fishing which I observed still done in Molugan, El Salvador area while I was snorkeling there.

On the dive day itself and at the dive site determine the environmental condition if there is a possibility that it will change while you are down underwater. Pre-plan a signal from the boatman for any eventuality. The water condition is assess by its A)current, if too strong to make it difficult to hold a position, B) wave action, it is exhausting while on surface, C) water visibility, would be nice to see clearly the wonders God made underwater, and D) wind, it is always cold after a dive. Crystal blue water indicate good visibility and gray or greenish water reduced visibility.

HAVE A FUN DIVE!!!